Help me create something artistic..., with an unintentional silhouette?

[Xerraire]

Hi all!

I am slowly creating a page just from my son's wedding. For my first time out photographing a wedding, I am not too unhappy with the results. I wasn't the official photographer, these are just the shots taken as the groom's mom.

Have a look here » http://xerraireart.com/Photos/categories.php?cat_id=11


However, there was one moment that Enric and Miranda shared that looked so sweet, and I really goofed and it was way dark. However, I'd love to keep that moment in memory, somehow, in a soft, artistic, and creative way. I've been playing with the image, but am so out of creative juices of late. I'd love to see or hear your ideas to rescue the photo!

Any takers? If I did this right, the photo is attached, if not, the photo can be found here » http://www.xerraire.com/silhouette2.jpg

Thanks!
Barb

[Kraellin]

there are two basic problems to this photo. one, like you said, it was taken too dark. ok, you know that. the other is that it's taken indoors against an outdoor light setting, giving a very dark area and a too light area.

so, the first thing shld probably be to balance these areas up a bit. for that you could use curves, or levels, or contrast/light, or a plugin like fast fix.

depending on how far you want to bring the lighting up, you're going to run into a noise problem due to this dark being brought up into the light. you can correct somewhat for that in several ways. you could soften more, noise reduce with edge preserving smooth or texture preserving smooth or run it through something like neat image or maybe use gausian blur.

the problem there is going to be loss of detail, however. so, it's going to be a balancing act between dark/light and detail/noise. by softening or gausian blur you can get a sort of dreamy effect, if that's what you want, and also reduce the noise. i didnt try neat image, but it might reduce the noise without too much loss of detail, but, i didnt try yet.

the problem i see is you bring up the light, gain the noise, reduce the noise, and lose detail or smoothness of texture. so, it's a bit of a trick and a compromise at times. i'm only using paint shop pro and maybe photoshop has something which can do this better. so, we'll see what the photoshop folks say.

in the meantime, you could play around with those effects i mentioned and see what you get. i wouldnt worry too much about being too creative on this. it's a great composition all by itself. the picture says it all

Craig

[Elleth]

Hi Barb,
I'm not sure if this is what you had in mind or not, but I thought I would have a go at it.
First I did a levels adjustment on the image to bring out more detail, then I ran one of Mike Finns Portrait tool actions '"Misty Glow".
And that was it.took about 5 minutes.
I'm not sure where I got the action from, if I can find it I'll post it here.

[Legacy~Art]

I used a couple of different masks.

[Caitlin]

I know you asked for photo art, but this picture can be brought back to look like a photo too. I just did a shadow/highlight adjustment. Photo art isn't my thing, so I simply put a basic sandstone texture on the second example, and a mask on the third.

[Cameraken]

Nothing worse than the flash not going off.

This picture could be saved if you really wanted to. I’ve done a very quick restore on this and it could be made better.
However looking at your website you probably have enough good images

I would leave it as a silhouette. It could look good in a decent heart shaped frame

Caitlin has just posted while I was writing this. I’ve probably taken mine too light but I’ll post it anyway.

Ken

[Caitlin]

I really like that sillhouette Ken! As I was doing that heart shape I noticed their heads fitted the shape nicely - you've exploited that really well.

[Xerraire]

This is going so well, and I am absorbing all your ideas.

The misty glow is just a very good work, I really like that.

LegacyArt, that is one idea I had thought of, but wasn't sure how to execute it, and you went above and beyond my idea and its so pretty!

The sandstone is actually a very cute idea, and all that you've done has truly brought out the details.

Now, Ken, you have also enhanced on an idea that I had, and just leave it as a silhouette and removing the background, made all the more adorable with the heart frame.

Thanks everyone!

[Kraellin]

legacy,

i like that second one. great framing.

and ken, i also like the silhouette idea.

and, since no one else mentioned it, there's actually another heart shape in the picture already that could be taken advantage of. if you look at the area just below their chins and extending down between their bodies, you'll see this is somewhat heart-shaped. some possibilities there also.

Craig

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Barb, just a quick idea.

[Xerraire]

I like, Gary

You made the bg disappear and turned it into a certain mood more.

[Swampy]

Lovely Picture! I can see why you wanted to salvage it, Mom.. :-)

In Photoshop CS, ran shadow/highlight then a jpeg reducing filter. I felt the overall photo was a little too warm for the mood so I reduced the reds.

[Billfields]

I think it's nice as is. You don’t really need details to impart the feeling of the moment. Maybe just something like this.... You might even want to darken the figures more. It has the look of the old silhouettes and darkening out the detail would increase that. You could probably then find better background and matting colors. I tried to find something that matched what was there.

Bill

[LQQKER]

Perhaps this is too abstract considering the event, however, I'm just bouncing this idea.

Knocked out image.
Replaced bg.
some hand work.
Corrected color.
simplified.
Numerous hue & sat adj.
Added texture and lace frame.

[Xerraire]

These are all wonderful and beyond my expectations.

This is a great forum with many talented and creative people!
LQQKER, I didn't consider that abstract at all! Its very lovely!!
Billfields you had a wonderful idea.
Swampy you can understand how I am trying to preserve the moment! You really did well!

These are all wonderful!

[greatguy]

Well, I gave it a go - I found it quite difficult to get the image bright enough - my first few attemps were disasters because of the strong discoloration in the blue and green channels. I ended up replacing both and then running the adjusted image through noiseware. The sunset is from our vacation this year when we stopped in Carmel for a day.

[Xerraire]

Say, that is yet ANOTHER idea entirely I hadn't thought of!

An image over another romantic type image!

Thanks

[pjanak]

Here is my shot at it. I selected the bride and groom. You can use the selection tools but I used "imagiam: Auto recognition". It makes selections far easier. I then used CS2's shadow/highlight feature to bring them out. I then reversed the selection to dark and blur the background. I then applied the "Neat image" filter to reduce the noise resulting from the low light.
I then duplicate this image to another layer. I then guassain blured and screened that layer. I also adjust the opacity of the layer until I was pleased with the image. This second layer is used to create a sort of dreamy/misty glow. I then decided this image would be better off as black and white and then adjust the contrast. For this quicky tehre were a few things in the image I accidently overlooked. Suych as the bright window passing throu her vial. Also My selection of the bride and groom left far too sharp an edge. So I used the blur tool to correct for that a little. The final image could be better but all in all I like it.

Pete Janak

[Xerraire]

I don't have CS, but this is a wonderful way to go. Thank you. Its dreamy and lovely!

Barb

[Kraellin]

thought i would give this another shot. dont ask how i got here cause i just couldnt tell you. basically, i wanted to treat this as a restoration, but didnt quite make it, so i went for close with a touch of photo art.

Craig

[nebgranny]

Gosh so many wonderful ideas and work. Ken I really like what you did. Could you please post how you got the heart effect. I am making a Wedding Collage and would love to do somethng like it for the collage . Thanks Neb

[Cameraken]

Thanks for your kind words Nebgranny.

The heart was easy. In PS7 I used the custom shape tool.
It is located in the Toolbar below the Text tool and above the Eyedropper.

Create a new layer and fill with white.
Set your foreground colour to black
Click and hold the tool above the eyedropper and choose Custom Shape Tool from the drop down list.
Up on the top menu click the little arrow by the Shape and open the Custom shape picker.
You will see the Heart in the box called Heart Card.
Drag out the shape as big as you want.


I used it to make a mask. And then inverted it to make another mask for this picture (that is why I chose black and white for the colours) but it can be used in many other ways as well.

Hope this helps.

Ken

[Bibyrox]

Originally Posted by Legacy~Art

I used a couple of different masks.

HI! I love your results!!! Can you please teach me to obtain these effects?!

Thank you very much for attention.

[cinderella]

Find all the approaches to this photo fascinating.

Legacy Art, I too would like to know where you found or how you created the beautiful masks you used.

I'm making a collage of my daughter's wedding snapshots and have another wedding of my son coming up next spring so would love to use masks like these which are so subtle. I've googled searches for something like them but have had no luck.

Thanks to everyone for all the great ideas.

[Nanls]

This kind of stuff is a lot of fun, used masking and a background I made especially for this type of image. of course we have a 100k limit here, so images don't look as good as they could.
~Nancy~
www.fixthepixs.com

[RooB]

Ah, I had to join in-- I just had to.